[SPOILERS] Seven can't explain that.

[SevenSpirits]

Tide goes in, tide goes out, never a miscommunication.

If you're playing in the game, or lurking another player, please stay out until after the game. Here's a picture to take up space. It's a Wharf! In some theoretical sense, anyway.

[SevenSpirits]

In this game we're using this mod which I just posted a few days ago. Here's the changeset which will be in effect this game:

Traits
FIN: +1c on tiles with 3c or more
EXP: Double speed granaries, +2 health (no harbor or worker bonuses)
CRE: only +1 culture in all cities (still +100% production of library, theater and colosseum)
SPI: unchanged
ORG: unchanged
IND: unchanged
PHI: +150% gpp, double speed universities
IMP: +100% GG points, +50% settler production, and double speed markets and banks
CHA: +3 happy in all cities, -25% XP requirements, and double speed barracks and drydock (no happiness from monuments or broadcast towers)
AGG: Removed, replaced with AGRICULTURAL (AGR): +1f on tiles with 4f or more
PRO: Removed, replaced with PRODUCTIVE (PRO): +1h on tiles with 4h or more, +50% worker production, +50% workboat production

Civilizations
Inca: Terrace loses culture, requires Agriculture instead of Pottery.
India: Fast Workers cost 75h, not 60.

Techs
Agriculture & Hunting cost 40.
Mining & Fishing cost 50.
Mysticism & Wheel cost 60.
(Previously, Fishing was 40, Mysticism was 50, and Agriculture was 60.)
Metal Casting Cost reduced to cost of Alphabet (from 450 down to 300).

Units
War Elephants reduced to 7 strength.
Swordsmen gain the Combat 1 promotion instead of +10% city attack. Praetorian is now just a 7-strength swordsman.
Scouts require no tech (so all players start with one) and have 1 move. They gain +1 movement point at Hunting.
Workboats require no tech. (You still need fishing to work water tiles.)

Wonders
Great Lighthouse: only +1 trade route per coastal city, not +2.
Colossus: +2c to water tiles only in that city.

Buildings
New building: Wharf. Requires Compass. Costs 100h. +3xp for naval units, +1c from water tiles.

Wonder/Building Resource Doublers
All wonders/buildings that had +100% production with a specific resource now only have +50% production with that resource.

Corporations
Sid’s Sushi food per resource reduced from 0.5 to 0.2, and culture per resource reduced from 2 to 1, and maintenance per resource reduced by half.

Nukes
ICBM cost increased from 500 to 1500.
Tactical Nuke cost increased from 250 to 750.
Nukes never create fallout on tiles containing strategic resources.

Naval Mechanics
Blockade range reduced to 1.
Circumnavigation mechanic is removed.
“Naval Initiative” mechanic: Naval units that attack with their first movement point from a water tile get +15% attack.
New Naval Promo: Vigilance I. +20% defense.
New Naval Promo: Vigilance II. Req. Vig I. +20% defense.

Espionage
Active missions removed.
Great Spy bomb value reduced by half: 3000 to 1500.

Included Bugfixes
* Trade route turn order bug
* Foreign trade route cities lost permanently when your city using those routes is destroyed (fix is taken from BTS unofficial patch)
* Build culture double production
* Build wealth/research/culture + production automation double production
* Proposed trades including cities, where the cities no longer exist to be trades, are not cancelled (note: I consider this a bug because proposed trades are already cancelled if a player lacks the requisite e.g. resources/gold. could be considered not a bug)
* Production decay counter on a type of build (e.g. axeman) is not reset after completing one if the next item in the queue is of the same type (fix is taken from BTS unofficial patch)
* Feature growth/disappearance rates, and bonus discovery (mine pop) rates, do not scale with game speed

I think I would like last pick of leaders so I can coordinate my pick with what others take for testing out traits. Theoretically, I hold the position that all the traits are equal, so I shouldn't need to pick for strength, right? So I'm probably choosing a civ first, if it matters.

[BRickAstley]

[suttree]

Can you explain how you modeled the value the of the Agricultural trait?

[SevenSpirits]

I take it the warrior location is where the scout will be?

[SevenSpirits]

Can you explain how you modeled the value the of the Agricultural trait?

Food comes in, food goes out. You can't explain that.

[suttree]

[SevenSpirits]

Can you explain how you modeled the value the of the Agricultural trait?

To give a less joking answer, I compared it to the granary effect of EXP. I had estimated (on quick speed) this effect to be worth 40/city approximately when the city is founded, and for the total value of this to be worth 167b at the start. (For those unaware of the context, I was measuring everything in beakers-at-the-start-of-the-game, even though if you actually had a ton of beakers at the start you'd get seriously diminishing returns from them. It's just a number to compare with other numbers.)

Back to AGR: first I considered a trait which is simply +1f in every city. My interest rates say this is worth only a bit less than 30f per city upon founding, and my conversion ratios say that is worth 48h per city upon founding. Looking back at the granary numbers, we wanted to be matching them in order to reach a per-trait value of ~170, and instead we are exceeding them by about 20%. So I estimate that 1f/city is a bit too strong. I believe that 1f per 4+f tile is a little bit weaker: I'm assuming only a bit more than 1 such resource per city, and it takes a few turns before it's improved. The single biggest part of that is you don't get the bonus from the beginning of the game - you have to improve a tile first.

There are other factors, too, which make me suspect that the raw value I'm estimating is a bit of an overestimate. Food conversion ratio to hammers isn't as good as 8:5 until the city has a granary. Marginal value of 1f when you're already working a food resource is lower. Food gets used as hammers quite a lot in the early game. And early game interest rate is higher, so 30f for 1fpt is overestimating the value of the fpt.

Overall, I'm concerned that AGR could be the best trait, but also believing that it might well not be. I think it just has to be tried in practice. If it is too good, that's unfortunate, because weakening the effect is difficult. Doing it for only 5f tiles (which is actually what I thought of originally (along with another small effect), and fits in a nice pattern with 3+c and 4+h on other traits) tends to be pretty random in its efficacy because there are a lot of 4f food resources and mapmakers treat them very similarly to 5f food resources. The 5f thing does have more desirable IMO interactions with FP/Biology but the fact that it might not even help your capital at all is a big problem for an effect that has pretty high power on average.

This trait was pretty much the last thing I decided on before deciding the mod was ready to show, and I'd considered it for quite a while. So from that perspective it's one of the more likely aspects of the mod to be unsatisfactory.

[SevenSpirits]

So, the start.

It's pretty annoying compared to an average one. AH is required. Both resources are 2 away from the capital in opposite directions, so hooking them will be slow. Moving onto the only plains hill in sight loses the good food resource and leaves us with only a 4/1 tile and FPs.

One option, actually, is to pick AGR and farm the FPs. It's unclear to me how strong that is, because you're losing some great capital cottages (and capital cottages are worth a lot more than other cottages), but it sure looks strong. Certainly AGR is boosted by getting a FP start! However, I'm not expecting to take AGR if 2+ other people take it, so we'll have to see.

[SevenSpirits]

First two picks were Washington and Hannibal, which surprised me. a) I expected the new traits to go faster since they're obviously the biggest new thing to try out, and b) CHA is not the first trait I expected to see duplicated. Maybe that's a good sign?

Anyway, I picked Zulu, because there are only two civs with Agri/Hunting starts and Zulu is the good one. If I were to pick Persia, probably one of those CHA jokers if no one else would pick Zulu, and then where would I be? I went for those two techs because I may end up needing to take a PRO leader (to try it if no one else takes one), and in that case I need the double prereqs for AH if I want to settle on the plains hill and still get AH in time for the worker.